


i would know him blind

by archons



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Lyrium Addiction, M/M, One Shot Collection, Panic Attacks, Rehabilitation, Romance, Second Chances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 18:37:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6482482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archons/pseuds/archons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of oneshots focused around Raleigh Samson and his relationship with Phoebus Trevelyan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hard Nights

Phoebus wiped his sleeve across Samson’s forehead before pressing a kiss to his hairline, lingering over the clammy skin with a sigh.

Exhaustion wasn’t doing either of them any favors. Sweat clung to what little cotton they wore, making each movement a lesson in toothless frustration. Bile turned the air around them sour, and every movement they made was a careful one, not wanting to upturn the basin at the foot of the bed. The last thing they needed on this endless night were soiled sheets.

“Do you want—?” Phoebus cleared his throat, struggling against the dryness in his throat. “May I get you something to drink?”

Samson didn’t look up at him. His eyes remained closed, shifting restlessly under thin eyelids, but a strong and shaky hand curled around his wrist. “It won’t help anything,” he murmured, his own voice a hoarse burr to match his lover. Phoebus caught a sliver of blue-gray when Samson hesitated, eyes catching the chapped lips inches from his face. “I’d rather you stay, but… if you need it, it’s no matter.”

“I don’t… ah, I’m fine.” Phoebus shifted on the bed, squirming his massive frame beneath the curl of Samson’s and resting his head on his shoulder. “There’ll be water in the morning.”

He could still see stars over the Frostbacks, but sometime between sobbing at the pain in his hand and holding Samson while he emptied whatever was left in his stomach, the sky had become a gradient of dark and pale blues. The highest peaks of the mountains were capped with shades of pink. 

“It is morning,” Samson murmured. His hand tangled into Phoebus’s thick hair, guiding the man at his side closer and closer still, actions betraying his words. “Get your cup.”

“Noon,” he whispered. “There will be water at noon. I’ll drink it then.”


	2. Superstitions

They spent hours together before Samson noticed the acorn on the windowsill.

He lifted himself up onto his elbow, blinking bleary eyes to assure himself that he wasn’t seeing things. He wasn’t. No, the acorn was perched beneath the Serault glass, barely visible against the dark of the night with only the barest flicker of a dying fire to illuminate it.

Phoebus stirred at his side. “Raleigh?” he asked, voice dry from sleep. “Is something…?”

“Superstitious as an old hag,” Samson said. His answer was a crooked smile on his mouth. “I shouldn’t expect any more from a Marcher.”

Confusion struck his lover, leaving him with a furrowed brow and a cloudy look in his eyes. After a long moment of quiet passed, Phoebus’s body shook with a sigh. He leaned in, pressing his face to Samson’s sleep-warmed chest. “I don’t like storms,” he murmured. “One of my sisters was struck by lightning as a child. Ever since then…”

“I wasn’t teasing you.” Samson brushed a hand over Phoebus’s hair and urged him back down onto the pillows. He followed suit. “Everybody’s got… y’know, shit they believe in. If it helps…”

“Then it’s okay,” Phoebus finished.

They fell asleep. The lazy crackle and pop of the dying fire was drowned out by the sound of faraway thunder as the storm retreated.


	3. Hope

The guards were none too gentle as they brought Samson back to his cell. 

His thinning hair clung to the sides of his face, still dripping water onto his neck and shoulders. A chill shuddered through him as he waited for the guard to produce his key, focused more on the fifty foot drop only a few feet away than the clanging and cursing going on in front of him. Wind whipped through the space, causing candles to gutter and spit, prisoners to shiver and shrug their blankets of their heads.

As the key found its mark and the lock gave a heavy click, a familiar voice rose about the whistle of the wind. “Excuse me.” It was the Inquisitor. Of course it was. Only he would be so polite to someone as low as a guard. “Could I have a moment with him?”

Both guards opened their mouths to protest, but Phoebus’s hand was on Samson’s arm before they could speak a word. He was polite, but he was also disarming. That was the important part.

Phoebus guided him along, their path already set, and didn’t stop walking until they were alone. 

The hallway was long and it was empty, but more importantly, it was warm. It became warmer still when Phoebus stepped closer wearing a smile that said he knew something, the hand on Samson’s arm moving down to his waist instead.

“I spoke to Fiona.” Phoebus’s cheeks twitched, his smile broadening. “She knows a healer, a Nevarran man, who’s going to be in Orlais within the month. He’s worked extensively on the borderlands, fixing up soldiers affected by blood magic.”

Samson quirked a brow, and that was enough doubt to pull Phoebus in closer. He rubbed at Samson’s waist with both hands, then, far too excited to question his need to touch.

“It’s not the same thing. I know. I questioned her about how that might help you, thinking it wouldn’t, but it will!” Even the flickering of a candle couldn’t beat out watching the glitter in Phoebus’s eyes. “Blood magic does terrible things to a person’s insides. He knows how to mend those wounds, how to get your organs back in working order.”

Hope tasted vaguely bitter and a little like Amrita Vein. Or that might have been the new concoction Dagna shoved down his throat that afternoon. 

“What do you think?”

Phoebus’s smile refused to budge, even in the face of Samson’s unspoken suspicion. “I think it’s just something else to try.” He leaned his head back against the wall behind him; the porous stone tugged at strands of his hair, but he barely noticed. “How much is he gonna cost, anyway? Don’t you have other things to handle?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Phoebus told him. He stood more surely then, feet firm on the ground and voice firm in his throat. “I’m taking a party, and we’re leaving for Ghislain in the morning.”

Samson opened his mouth, eager to brush him off and refuse, but Phoebus stopped him. Not with a question, not with a hand curled around his arm, but with his lips. 

He kissed him, suddenly and solidly.

His hands twitched, otherwise unmoving, at his sides. His lips ached to respond, but he found himself frozen in place. All he could do was taste Phoebus’s lips, feel them brush against his mouth, and realize…

It wasn’t the hope that was bitter; bitter was the mouth he used to swallow it. 

When Phoebus pulled away, eyes bright and cheeks dark with a blush, he gave Samson’s thick shirt a gentle tug. “Didn’t mean for that to–ah, it wasn’t horrible, was it?”

“No,” was the only word Samson could choke out before his arms were around him, tongue sliding into his mouth, chasing what little hope Phoebus could give him.


	4. Home

_Just breathe_.  
  
Samson’s voice is… somewhere. Behind him, sitting heavily on his shoulder, distant enough to drown in the blood rushing through his ears. _B_ _reathe_. The thought of breathing feels foreign, like asking a newborn to _paint_ or a dying man to _live_.   
  
Phoebus can feel a pair of lean hands on him, a weight between his shoulder blades and a weight against his waist. He follows the movement as best he can, though it doesn’t do much good. His head is a torrent of fire, the sickly green of the fade, the sensation of loss and despair when you’ve let something dear to you slip away.  
  
“Where,” he rasps pitifully before shaking his head, unable to choke his next words.   
  
Lacing his fingers together, he presses them to his mouth to stem his rapid breathing. He gasps and whines, tears sticking to his lashes and in the lines around his eyes. _Ostwick_. Home. Father. Mother. Gone?   
  
Gone.  
  
 _Gone_. Phoebus squeezes his eyes shut and works his jaw in vain. The muscles are clenched so tightly his mouth and neck ache. Saliva floods in behind his lips in preparation to empty his stomach, but it never comes. He swallows it back, tries to breathe, holds his breath instead.  
  
Behind him, somewhere, Samson leans in and presses his forehead to his shoulder. He’s frustrated, and some damning thought in Phoebus’s head whispers, _He_ _hates you for being so weak._  
  
Coughing against his hands, Phoebus lets out a broken sob before sucking in another harsh breath.   
  
The letter sits beside them both, crumpled from Phoebus’s shaking, fretting hands. The rifts around Thedas have not stopped. Neither has the one outside of Ostwick. His nephew writes, and Phoebus is lost. Nevarra begs for his help. Antiva promises him their allegiance for his hand. Even Tevinter writes; they have no other choice.  
  
“Where do i go?” Phoebus asks himself, but it’s Samson who answers, mouth against the nape of his neck.   
  
“Go home first,” he tells him. “While you still have one.”

 


	5. Lips

They aren’t soft.   
  
Even right after Samson licks them, the skin of his lips is still cracked in places. They’re a rainbow of unhealthy colors, from gray to desaturated shades of blue and purple.   
  
But they’re _full_ and the way they move is unlike anything Phoebus has ever seen–or paid much mind to, at least.  
  
“Inattentive little shit.”  
  
Phoebus smiles and shakes his head. He presses closer than before, his own lips catching on Samson’s jaw before he gives it a kiss. “You distract me,” he murmurs, and it’s as if the air changes around them. The chill of Skyhold is replaced with the heat of _them_. “Your mouth… ah, it’s…”  
  
Samson leans near enough for the breath of his chuckle to tickle the skin of his ear. “Of all the things I have that could make you stutter…”  
  
“I’m a simple man.” Phoebus’s voice is a sigh. “Or a taken one.”  
  
“Oh, shut it.”

 


	6. Laughter

“It’s not that i don’t have plenty reasons to laugh,” Samson tells Phoebus one night, swollen-knuckled fingers trailing fingertips down his nose. “I’ve got loads. different laughs, too.”  
  
Phoebus’s smile is faint, but it’s there, tucked into the corner of his full mouth. “Like what?”  
  
“A _fuck you_ laugh to Corypheus, for one, along with a finger or two. One for the maker, one for Meredith, one for thinking any of this was a good idea.” Samson sighs and shuts his eyes, his hand drooping onto his chest where Phoebus’s is gathered in his nightshirt. “I’d throw in a pathetic _I can’t believe my luck_ laugh, too.”  
  
Phoebus looks up at him, brow wrinkled in a curious furrow. “So why don’t you? I don’t mind the understandably sour face, but it’s a good question, isn’t it?”  
  
“One i hate you for asking,” Samson murmurs, and there’s gravel in his voice that might have been a chuckle in another time. He doesn’t mean it; he hopes that comes across. When he opens his eyes, they meet Phoebus’s, somber and bleary. “It hurts, yeah? Laughing does.”  
  
Hurts like a headache. Throbs at the base of his head and behind his eyes. Tears his thoughts to pieces and makes him swallow the shreds he can barely choke down. Turns his stomach, twists his guts into knots.  
  
Phoebus presses a kiss to his collarbone and sighs against the exposed skin. “Maybe it won’t for much longer.”

 


	7. Luck

_Lucky_ was a word that felt strange on Samson’s tongue, even warm and wet from Phoebus’s mouth. He knew he was, but there was something fleeting about luck. It felt skin-of-the-teeth. It felt like an accident. Nothing about the man he held and the way they came together was an accident.  
  
There was nothing _fortunate_ about him. Samson knew that, too. Fortunate men don’t live lives like his. Fortunate men marry young, father many, and work their hands smooth. He swore he could still taste lyrium in the air on every exhale. He wasn’t _fortunate_.  
  
 _B_ _lessed_ didn’t feel wrong, but it wasn’t all the way right, either. Maybe the Maker was making up for lost time. He could use a pat on the head and a well-timed break from the being he worshiped for so long. Phoebus might be his solemn, “I’m sorry,” or his wink and nudge in the proper direction.  
  
Words weren’t samson’s strongest suit, after all. He could tell a decent joke or scare someone silly, but when the lights were low and the kisses slowed down… it was more difficult, almost impossible, for his head to find what he wanted to say, like searching for a dry stone in a swamp.  
  
“This is just where I was supposed to end up,” he said finally, fingers curling into Phoebus’s long hair, pressing the thick of it away from his face. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to call it. It just happened.”  
  
“It just happened,” Phoebus repeated slowly, voice as fond as his eyes. “You know, I like the sound of that.”  
  
So maybe he did get lucky sometimes.

 


	8. Affirmations

Dagna keeps the armor because of course she does.  
  
Samson can’t begrudge her curiosity. If it helps the Inquisition, if it helps any of the stragglers Corypheus _hasn’t_ snatched up in the wake of his defeat, then he should be glad for it.   
  
But the armor sits there, blackened and strong and _red,_ and Samson feels vulnerable. Sick. Like someone cracked open his shell and all but skinned him, propping what remained of his strength against a wall in the Undercroft. He sits on a stool beside Dagna’s workbench, and he stares.   
  
His arms are too weak with pain to pick it up again. His hands aren’t dexterous enough to fix the buckles. He’s too sweaty and too pained and too tired to look like the man he was those months ago. And he’s too desperate to ignore even the faintest hum of the shards of red lyrium left in the chest cavity after Dagna wrenched the rest out.  
  
“We could throw it out,” Harritt tells him, having followed Samson’s eyes from their sockets to the armor. He leaned against the handle of his broom. “I think Dagna’s too attached to it. The woman keeps _everything_.”  
  
“She’s not done.” Samson licks his lips. They don’t get wet anymore, but that doesn’t stop him. “She’ll get rid of it when she’s done. Not the only thing she’ll toss, either.”  
  
Harritt’s laugh is mirthless. The swish of broom bristles against stone breaks Samson’s line of sight, and he looks towards the waterfall instead. Rushing water is better. He takes a deep breath, releases it suddenly with a cough. Smells good, too.  
  
“You don’t throw away men.”  
  
Harritt’s words surprise him, and he turns back on the stool, looks him in his eyes.   
  
“It’s wrong,” he tells him. He doesn’t stop sweeping. “You’ve got more to give, but even when you don’t, your place’ll be here. And when you die, they’ll bury you with everybody else.”  
  
Samson wants to laugh, wants to shake his head, wants to tell Harritt he’s full of shit. But he doesn’t.  
  
Instead, he murmurs a shaky, “Thanks,” that’s drowned out by the waterfall.

 


End file.
